August 20, 2026

Rep. Mike Levin Condemns Politically Motivated Termination of Energy Grants

In New Letter, Rep. Levin Denounces the Cancellation of 321 Grants for Projects That Would Lower Energy Costs; Demands Reinstatement of Grants

Washington, D.C.—Today, Rep. Mike Levin (CA-49), alongside House Appropriations Committee Member Rep. Mark Pocan (WI-02), led colleagues in a letter to Department of Energy (DOE) Secretary Chris Wright and Office of Management and Budget Director (OMB) Russell Vought condemning the politically motivated termination of grants in Democratic-aligned states for projects intended to lower energy costs, improve electric grid reliability, create jobs, and strengthen the United States’ global leadership in energy innovation.

On October 2, 2025, DOE announced it would terminate 321 grants supporting 223 projects across the country, accounting for approximately $8 billion. Three projects were canceled in California’s 49th Congressional District, including $1.2 billion statewide for ARCHES hydrogen production hubs, $8.8 million for Smartville electric battery recycler, and $2 million for GKN Hydrogen Corp. California lost more than $3.3 billion in funding from these cancellations.

Since the grants were terminated, several grant recipients have sued. In recent court filings, DOE officials admitted that the cancellation of billions of dollars in funding for projects was politically motivated. The termination was “based solely” on whether the grantee was located in a Blue State that did not vote for Donal Trump for President in 2024. Multiple courts have now ruled that the terminations violate the Fifth Amendment’s guarantee of equal protection under the law.

The letter condemns the grant terminations and demands that DOE immediately reinstate the illegally cancelled energy grants.

Read the letter here and below:

Dear Secretary Wright and Director Vought:

In light of court filings recently made public, we write to condemn in the strongest terms your decision to terminate nearly 300 energy projects in October 2025 based solely on the political identity of the grant recipient’s state. We are deeply concerned by how these terminations were politically motivated to target projects in Democratic-leaning states, undermine the spirit of competitively awarded merit-based decision making for how federal taxpayer dollars are spent, and risk further increasing costs for our constituents. We urge you to immediately reinstate the funding for these projects that were subject to blatantly partisan cancellation.

In October 2025, the Department of Energy (DOE) announced the decision to terminate nearly 300 energy projects in blue states, totaling more than $7.5 billion.^[1] This announcement followed a post from Office of Management and Budget (OMB) Director Russ Vought that “nearly $8 billion in Green New Scam funding to fuel the Left’s climate agenda is being cancelled… The projects are in the following states: CA, CO, CT, DE, HI, IL, MD, MA, MN, NH, NJ, NM, NY, OR, VT, WA.”^[2] The terminations came as President Trump was repeatedly threatening to use the government shutdown as an opportunity for political retribution against Democrats.^[3]

Despite these facts, for months, Secretary Wright repeatedly denied that the decision to terminate these grants were related to partisanship, including while testifying to Congress that “all of the 2,270 projects we evaluated were not evaluated in any way, shape or form based on where they were. … And all of the people that worked on our project review process did not take into account any politics in the evaluation of these projects,” and claiming that project decisions were made based on “merits and unrelated to politics.”^[4]

Yet in a court filing this month, the Department’s own lawyers contradicted Secretary Wright’s testimony to Congress, attesting that none of the grants terminated in October 2025 were terminated “based on any programmatic, statutory, cost-reduction, or performance-based factor.”^[5] DOE lawyers further admitted that, following OMB’s review and selection of grants to terminate, “the inclusion of grants in the October notice tranche was based solely on the political identity of the grant recipient’s state, i.e., whether the recipient’s location and/or place of performance was in a Blue State or a non-Blue State.”^[6] These astonishing admissions in court raise serious concerns about the legality of these terminations.

This blatant weaponization of federal taxpayer dollars to punish states based on their political leanings is wholly inappropriate and in violation of the Fifth Amendment’s guarantee of equal protection of the laws. The courts have already ruled against the DOE terminations. In a different lawsuit, St. Paul v. Wright, DOE lawyers admitted that a “primary reason for the selection of which DOE grant termination decisions were included in the October 2025 notice tranche was whether the grantee was located in a ‘Blue State,’ —a state that ‘tend[s] to elect and/or recently elected Democratic candidates in state and national elections,’ including for President of the United States in 2024.”^[7] On January 12, 2026, the court ruled that the termination decisions violated the Fifth Amendment’s equal protection guarantees because the classification “was not rationally related to the asserted legitimate government purpose of ‘administering grant programs consistent with the agency’s priorities.’”^[8] Months later, in American Institute of Chemical Engineers v. Wright, the Administration admitted again that the grantees' awards were terminated because of their location in blue states and conceded it was in violation of equal protection guarantees.^[9]

Further, this Administration’s decision to play political games will result in genuine harms at a time when millions American families are already struggling to pay their electricity bills amidst the ever-rising cost of living. This Administration’s reckless energy policy and award terminations, designed to stifle the development of clean, affordable energy in Democratic-aligned states and prop up more expensive dirty energy, will only further increase the cost burden for families to keep the lights on and kill good-paying jobs.

Two court decisions have now found that your department violated the Fifth Amendment’s equal protection guarantee when it terminated grants in Democratic-leaning states in October 2025. Based on DOE’s own admission in the recent court filings that all the grant terminations in October were based on political factors, DOE and OMB must immediately reinstate all grants that it has wrongfully terminated. There is no other acceptable remedy for this corrupt abuse of power and weaponization of taxpayer dollars. We will utilize every oversight and legislative tool available to ensure that DOE and OMB follow the law, honor congressional intent, and address the skyrocketing cost of electricity.

Sincerely,

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